Last month was an emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions. The end of term is always a bit frazzle inducing! Buy the presents, send the carrier bags, pack for going away, over tired kids… etc etc. We also either know a disproportionate amount of people born in the summer or those with summer birthdays are more inclined to be sociable as June and July have also been action packed and full on with birthday parties, summer fairs and swimming galas a plenty!

But sheer exhaustion was not the main cause of emotional turmoil (although I suspect it didn’t help!). No, last month saw our baby boys last day at his lovely primary school… from September he’ll be heading off to the scary and entirely unknown world of (flashing lights and creepy music) DUM DUM DUMMMMMMM…. BIG SCHOOL! And I’m going to be honest; I’m not ready!

He is! But that’s beside the point! When he came home on the last day of Y5 he was heartbroken that the current Y6’s were leaving and that next year it would be his turn. He said he’d miss the teachers too much and he’d miss his friends too much and he’d miss his brother and (to a lesser extent!) his sister too much! He was worried about the work, worried about the homework, worried about being bullied, worried about getting lost! This time last year he was a bundle of anxieties that I slowly absorbed and panicked along with him.

But as the year has gone on, he’s grown to quite like the idea of meeting new friends and doing different subjects and being in a new space. His primary school is really small; he’s had the same 30 kids in his class for 7 years, all the staff know everyone… all the things that have made it an ideal environment to nurture and grow and guide him for his primary years have now got him thinking it’s time to spread his wings a bit.

But I’m not happy about all this wing spreading in the slightest! I’m in the ‘let’s keep your little wings down here where its safe and snuggly and secure and I can keep an eye on you’ camp!

I loved primary school but I hated secondary school. Everything about it. And as a parent the thing I hate most is the sudden lack of control that you have. When he went off for his transition day a couple of weeks ago, I just couldn’t settle! I was off in the afternoon and at one point found myself actually pacing. It just felt so alien that I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. I’d waved him off really early that morning to get a bus! A bus! He’s never even been on a bus with us so the thought of sending him off into the great wide world to stand at a bus stop and have to interact with a bus driver and pay actual money over and sit among kids who might be mean to him with no appropriate adult to step in and help left me in a cold sweat!!! A bus!!! I still don’t know how we’re expected to deal with that when it literally feels like a week and a half since I was walking him to school for his first day in reception, his podgy little hand firmly squeezed in mine! It was also a really warm day and in the frantic stressing of getting out the door to meet his friends, he forgot his water bottle. If he’d done that at primary school I’d have walked round and dropped it off but this is BIG SCHOOL!!! Jon was all for nipping it up (to clarify this terrifying, big, scary, unknown place is less than a mile from our house!) but I stepped in… he can’t be the kid whose DAD brings his water bottle on the first day of BIG SCHOOL! What are you thinking!? So then I spent the whole day picturing him dying of dehydration (despite me lasting from 1985-1999 with ever having a drink of anything during the 7 hour school day!)

The parents worry machine has gone into overdrive! What if he gets left behind by his current friends and doesn’t make any new ones? What if he hates it? What if the low level learning difficulties he’s battled with and overcome at Primary resurface and he can’t cope? What if he’s bullied? What if he gets in with the bad crowd and his great attitude slips? What if he gets in with a really bad crowd and becomes addicted to meth and crack and other bad words that I’m not street wise enough to know what they even are?? Social media… drugs… porn… grooming…. Stop the world I want to get off!

But I think the biggest thing for me; Big school signifies the end of a chapter in our book. He’s no longer our little boy. He’s almost as tall as I am. He eats more than most adults at a meal. I can no longer steal his shoes at the front door to pop something in the bin as they are too big! The shy little boy who was too scared to talk to adults at nursery is now brimming with confidence and will talk to anyone! He took the lead role in the play at school last month. He works hard, he is kind, he is helpful and thoughtful. We are so very proud of ‘Primary school George!’ But what if ‘Secondary School George’ is hard work? What if he stops having random conversations with anyone and everyone and becomes a mono-syllabic grunter with BO and a bad attitude!? What if the lovely friends he has now whose parents I know and like and trust get replaced with bad eggs who also grunt and have BO?!? What if his great attitude to the world dips and nose dives? What if we’re not very good parents of teenagers? Maybe we’ve peaked???? It feels like the world just got a whole lot bigger and scarier and I don’t like it one little bit! I want my baby back! Not the new born- he didn’t sleep! Let’s say 6 months??

So as I sat through the leavers assembly on Friday, not even attempting pretence at not crying, I wept not just because the content had been hand selected to pull on the heart strings (baby photos, what do I want to be when I get older, special songs with lyrics that even the lion without a heart would blub at!) No it wasn’t just the end of primary school that had me ugly crying in the back of the school hall. It was also the end of this chapter of innocence and the protective bubble he’s been living in. We’ve had the privilege of sending him to a school every day for the last seven years where he has been nurtured and protected and guided and inspired. He’s been with a gorgeous group of kids who are kind and been surrounded by staff who genuinely care and go an extra ten miles! He has bought into everything that primary school has to offer- he loves everything about school (apart from spelling tests) and the bar has been set really high by his experiences so far. I just hope this next chapter has the same happy ending!